Nov 4, 2026
Perhaps you’ve been in this position before. Your flight is cancelled hours before boarding. The airline cites a maintenance delay, then rejects your compensation claim under the banner of “safety.”
Most people accept that and move on. Safety is hard to argue with, and few people think to check what happened to the plane afterward.
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A new investigation suggests many Canadians should push back. If the safety label was misapplied, a single disruption could be worth up to $1,000 per passenger — or as much as $4,000 for a family of four flying together.
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Why are Air Canada and WestJet under investigation?
Rochon Genova, a Toronto-based class-action and aviation law firm, announced on Nov. 3, 2026 that it is examining how Air Canada, WestJet and other airlines use the safety-related maintenance exemption to deny compensation for delays and cancellations.
The firm confirms it’s investigating reports where airlines denied claims citing safety-related maintenance, despite flight-tracking logs showing the assigned aircraft was subsequently redeployed on different routes.
So the question isn’t whether an airline can ground a plane for safety. It’s whether aircraft reported as grounded due to maintenance remained active in flight service. Rochon Genova describes the matter as a potential class action, and the allegations have not been tested in court.
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When does ‘required for safety’ let an airline skip the payout?
The Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) are the federal standards defining airlines’ minimum responsibilities to travellers. The APPR splits disruptions into three tiers: outside airline control, safety-required, or controllable and non-safety-related. Only that last category triggers cash compensation.
For large carriers — those that carried at least two million passengers in each of the two previous calendar years — the payout depends on how late you arrive:
- $400 for a delay of three hours to less than six hours
- $700 for six hours to less than nine hours
- $1,000 for nine hours or more
That money is owed if the airline notifies you within 14 days of departure.
Here’s the detail many passengers miss: the regulations define “required for safety purposes” in a way that specifically excludes scheduled maintenance done to meet legal requirements. A genuine safety issue discovered at the gate can legally exempt the airline from paying compensation. Routine upkeep the airline planned for does not.
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Exemption or not, airlines must still rebook your flight or issue a full refund.
Why can a valid claim take so long to pay out?
Don’t expect a quick response when you push back. The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), the independent, quasi-judicial federal tribunal that handles air passenger complaints, reported a backlog of more than 95,000 complaints at the end of fiscal 2025-26. In that date range, passengers filed 44,071 complaints.
Once a resolution officer starts on a file, a decision comes within 60 days on average — but that clock doesn’t include time spent waiting in the queue.
Don’t be discouraged — changes are in the works. Bill C-31, tabled in May 2026, proposes hiring a third-party dispute resolution organization to clear the backlog and allowing fines of up to $1 million for systemic violations. Proposed changes that would ditch all three disruption tiers — and close the safety loophole along with them — were introduced back in December 2025, but they still haven’t officially taken effect. For now, the current rules apply.
What to do now
If an airline denied your claim by pointing to safety or maintenance, it’s worth a closer look:
- Check the basics: an arrival delay of at least three hours, with 14 days or less notice before departure
- Ask the airline, in writing, for the specific reason for the disruption — carriers are required to give one
- Save all the evidence, including boarding passes, rebooking notices, emails, texts and receipts
- Note your flight number and date, then check public flight-tracking records to see whether the aircraft flew other routes after your flight was cancelled
- File in writing within one year — the airline has 30 days to pay up or justify its refusal
- If you’re denied or get no reply, escalate through the CTA’s complaint portal or consider small claims court
Travellers who meet Rochon Genova’s criteria (a cancellation or delay exceeding three hours, a safety-related maintenance justification and no payout from either the airline or the CTA) can contact the law firm directly. It says reaching out doesn’t mean you’ve retained it and won’t cost you anything.
A maintenance excuse isn’t automatically the final word. The rules draw a clear line between safety and scheduled upkeep. If the plane you were told couldn’t fly spent the afternoon flying somewhere else, that line is worth testing.
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Amy Tokic is an SEO content editor for Money.ca. She holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Windsor. Amy is an award-winning author and has been writing professionally for 15 years, publishing articles in the lifestyle and health sectors.
